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Saturday, April 7, 2012

Before I Could Chicken Out

On the spur of the moment I put all of my cassius basaltic clay pieces in the kiln for their final firing yesterday. I quickly set the kiln to start firing before I could chicken out. I've been putting off firing these pieces for months, maybe even a year. OK I confess I just looked it up, it has been more than one year I've put off firing these cassius pieces. I was afraid to fire them for fear of exploding pieces. I was also feeling wasteful firing the kiln for such a small load. Today I finally felt courageous enough to just go for it.

This black sculptural clay is highly subject to dunting so is fired slowly to Cone 4, so must be fired separately from all the other work I make. Due to it's manganese content it is not functional so I've decided to apply an after firing spray on sealant. Here's a sample tile I just sprayed with clear sealers. See the wonderful ebony black final fired color. The left side is somewhat shiny and the right side is less so. I think I'll go with the right. Hope the kiln gods are favorable with at least a few of the pieces in this kiln load. The kiln is cooling down now; we shall see. This post is part of artists in blogland what's happening in the studio. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.

Hi Anna, thanks, down to 440, won't be long now before I can take a look.

Hi Ms. Sparrow, thanks, I hope it's a happy results, have a good holiday your way too.

Hi Michele, thanks, I had that little kiln, but I reasoned the test results in one kiln wouldn't be the same as the other so I sold it. These at least fill it up a little bit as most were rather tall on the one side, we shall see very soon now.

Look forward to seeing how these turn out. I looked online for this clay & found some interesting results. I like the deep, rich clay bodies. Laguna clay makes a dark brown cone 10 clay that has a similar richness.